About Wrongway Peter Peachfuzz

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It's particularly annoying that if you have the trader tool (or hostility info or any other map feature) open you have to shut it before you can exit the map and look around. Why can't we just shut the map with the tool bar etc still open?

I believe that part of the problem the developers face is that they don't have as much flexibility in terms of features that they can tweak or the degree to which they can tweak them as designers of an (entirely fictional) spacecraft. Warships in the Age of Sail (particularly those that were ship-rigged) simply did not differ from each other in all that many parameters. A good comparison would be with steam warships from the early 20th century. As anyone who has played around with the excellent ship designer in NWS' game "Rule the Waves" knows, there are a huge number of variables in warship design in that era that simply aren't present in sailing ships (e.g., hull, deck and turret armor, nature of fuel (coal/oil), torpedo protection, fire control, primary secondary and tertiary armament, turret design and placement, torpedo tube design and placement, etc).
In addition, ship design variation in NA has to fulfill two separate (and not entirely compatible) functions: (i) be varied enough to keep experienced players interested up to and beyond the highest command and crafting experience levels; and (ii) soak up all of the "money" that is generated in the game through trade, combat etc. so that the price of everything doesn't go through the roof over time.
I'm afraid these limited parameters and conflicting goals will create unhappy results (aberrations like "fine woods" and more probably general inflation) until players are given something beyond ships to meaningfully spend their money on. And no, I'm not referring to Yorkshire Puddings or Cheshire Cheeses, more like improved fortifications and ground combat units.

However this all ultimately turns out, I really hope that the issue of compensation for ships rendered useless is resolved as quickly as possible because of its potential harmful effect on the short-term playability of the game.
As some of the posts in this thread indicate, this issue may have a seriously adverse effect on ship crafting in the short term (which IMHO was already harmed by the resource scattering and “fine woods” imposed by the last patch).
Many clans are organized around the principal of cooperative shipbuilding, and since the last patch I have seen a loss of cohesion in my own clan. If shipbuilding goes into limbo for the next two months some clans may disintegrate completely. Since clans are the basic units of organization within the several nations, this would in turn probably cause a deterioration in the strategic conquest game.
It is also unfortunate that the announcement was handled the way it was. Initially the clear implication was that existing ships would be rendered useless without compensation. One would think after the uproar that the apparently accidental degradation of some ships from gold to purple caused by the last patch that the devs could have anticipated an unhappy reaction to the proposed wholesale destruction of players’ existing fleets.
Even though it has subsequently been stated that some form of compensation will be provided (nature currently unknown) one must wonder whether it would not be better to have delayed the announcement until the compensation could be at least generally described.
Rightly or wrongly, this game appears to suffer from some serious public relations issues and unnecessarily stirring up this kind controversy does not help matters.

Here's a thought: a limited number of clan outposts that could be used by all clan members, either for resource collection to assist shipbuilding or for strategic purposes. IMHO the latter would help quite a bit; if a country is shifting its strategic focus and the clan wants to shift with it, only 1 clan member would need to make the long lynx trip to establish the new clan outpost. It would certainly save a LOT of boring lynx-riding.

Thanks Hodo- I would assume that, as the defender, your mission would be in your own region rather than in the enemy's, but that it would remain open for 30 minutes to any enemies that happen to sail by. Is that correct?

So the two places where you can craft ships with the "Spanish Hunter" feature both start out owned by....... Spain??? I'm sure the Dons are hugely grateful for that. Sometimes the logic used in the development of this game escapes me.

I don't think I've seen a single foreign AI trader since the patch came out, either in friendly or hostile territory Plenty of monstrous SOL fleets that would have given Nelson a stroke, but no AI traders. Might be just a coincidenc.

Well, I can understand that some (such as yourself) might like it and some (such as myself) might not, but that doesn't really explain why it has to be all one way or all the other. Why can't new-style hostility missions and old-style quick missions exist side by side, particularly since I can still actually run non-hostility missions, it just takes 2-3x longer than it used to.
I would also suggest that a game that has seen the drop in numbers that this one has should be very cautious about writing off the entire category of "30 minute" players. The audience for a reasonably realistic online game covering the age of sail is probably pretty limited to start with, and if the quickest "action" you can get takes an hour and a half to two hours to complete (and can't be interrupted without the risk of losing a precious dura to your already-expensive ship) it's likely to shrink even further.

I find that it is still possible to run "old fashioned" missions that have no impact on hostility. For example, if I'm in South Carolina and pick a mission in North Carolina, it apparently has no impact on hostility, which is completely logical. However, if I want to run such a mission (to test out a new ship for example before venturing into hostile waters) I have to travel approximately two to three times further (into the next region) as I used to have to do under the old system. What's the point of that? Why can't I run simple old-style missions within the same state?